Mickela Panday, NCRHA clash over Mt Hope A&E conditions

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front po­lit­i­cal leader Mick­ela Pan­day has called for ur­gent ac­tion over con­di­tions at the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency De­part­ment of the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) at Mt Hope, de­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as a health­care sys­tem “in deep cri­sis”.

In a so­cial me­dia post yes­ter­day, Pan­day said she spent six hours at the fa­cil­i­ty while fol­low­ing up on a home­less man who had been ad­mit­ted from the Ch­agua­nas Health Fa­cil­i­ty on Fri­day.

Pan­day said she was shocked by the con­di­tions she en­coun­tered, de­scrib­ing the de­part­ment as re­sem­bling a “war zone”.

She said el­der­ly pa­tients, in­clud­ing some who were un­able to walk, were ly­ing on di­lap­i­dat­ed beds or sit­ting in chairs, with many with­out pil­lows, blan­kets or sheets.

Pan­day said doc­tors, nurs­es and pa­tient care as­sis­tants were work­ing “tire­less­ly un­der im­pos­si­ble con­di­tions”, adding that she placed no blame on the staff.

“They are do­ing the best they can with what they have,” she said.

Pan­day said some pa­tients had been wait­ing more than two days to be ad­mit­ted to a ward.

“This is sim­ply un­ac­cept­able in 2026. And I don’t want to hear who is to blame. Fix it,” she said.

She called on the Min­is­ter of Health and those re­spon­si­ble for the man­age­ment of Mt Hope to treat the sit­u­a­tion as an ur­gent pri­or­i­ty.

How­ev­er, the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) has re­ject­ed what it de­scribed as “po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed claims of in­ac­tion” at Mt Hope.

The NCRHA said it was con­cerned that the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the home­less man had be­come the sub­ject of po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sy.

The Au­thor­i­ty said vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple de­served “com­pas­sion, dig­ni­ty and ap­pro­pri­ate health­care” and that their cir­cum­stances should not be ex­ploit­ed for po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage.

The NCRHA al­so point­ed to Pan­day’s com­ments that the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the pub­lic health­care sys­tem had been al­lowed to con­tin­ue for decades.

It said the cur­rent chair­man and board, which as­sumed of­fice in Au­gust 2025, in­her­it­ed long­stand­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al and op­er­a­tional chal­lenges while con­tin­u­ing to pro­vide health­care to hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple.

Ac­cord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary 2026 fig­ures, the NCRHA has record­ed al­most 200,000 Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency at­ten­dances, more than 700,000 pri­ma­ry care at­ten­dances and al­most 40,000 in­pa­tient ad­mis­sions.

The Au­thor­i­ty said more than three mil­lion lab­o­ra­to­ry tests and 262,863 ra­di­ol­o­gy ex­am­i­na­tions were car­ried out, in­clud­ing 48,768 CT scans, along with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 22,500 sur­gi­cal cas­es.

At EWM­SC, the NCRHA said out­pa­tient clin­ics ac­com­mo­date about 700 pa­tients dai­ly across at least 25 med­ical and sur­gi­cal dis­ci­plines, ac­count­ing for near­ly 200,000 clin­ic vis­its an­nu­al­ly.

It said the Adult Emer­gency De­part­ment sees close to 200 pa­tients dai­ly, while the Pae­di­atric Emer­gency De­part­ment sees about 150. Near­ly 70 pa­tients from the Adult Emer­gency De­part­ment re­quire ad­mis­sion each day.

The NCRHA ac­knowl­edged in­her­it­ed chal­lenges af­fect­ing the pa­tient ex­pe­ri­ence, in­clud­ing staffing de­fi­cien­cies, re­source and equip­ment al­lo­ca­tion and man­age­ment, and ex­pen­di­ture man­age­ment.

It said the cur­rent lead­er­ship was work­ing to ad­dress these is­sues through up­grades to sur­gi­cal the­atres, ex­pan­sion of clin­i­cal ser­vices and im­prove­ments to health­care in­fra­struc­ture.

The NCRHA said pub­lic scruti­ny was im­por­tant but should al­so recog­nise the scale of ser­vices be­ing de­liv­ered and the long­stand­ing na­ture of the chal­lenges.

“Decades of ne­glect can­not be un­done in two short years, but the work has be­gun, sub­stan­tial im­prove­ments are be­ing pur­sued, and the NCRHA, un­der its cur­rent lead­er­ship, is de­ter­mined to get it done.”